Doctors say time for talking has passed

Michelle Locke says her $100,000 a year masks the fact she's 'slogging her guts out'. Picture / Paul Estcourt.

Hospital boards want a committee - but doctors say the time for talking has passed.
Non-emergency treatment of more than 10,000 patients will be postponed when the country's junior doctors strike this week.

During the five-day strike beginning on Thursday - the first national strike - 2500 union members in all 21 district health boards walk off the job.

Emergency departments are bracing themselves to cope using drastically reduced staff numbers. Health boards are advising people to avoid the emergency departments for non-urgent illness or injury.

Advertisements will appear in daily newspapers today mapping out the health boards' position on its negotiations with the Resident Doctors' Association, the union representing the junior doctors or resident medical officers.

The strike comes after the union rejected the health boards' offer to set up a joint group comprised equally of doctors and health board representatives to work out better working hours, pay and training.

District health boards say junior doctors work an average of 55 to 58 hours a week. Longer hours are an exception, not the rule. The union says its members often work 10 hours a night for seven consecutive days once every four weeks.

On pay, employers say a doctor straight out of medical school will start on a "package" of nearly $70,000. The union says the package includes superannuation, holiday pay and cost of training. With long hours worked, the hourly rate works out to be about $21 an hour.

Dr Nigel Murray, the health boards' advocate, said hospitals would still provide emergency and acute services during the strike, but thousands scheduled for elective surgery and outpatient clinics would be affected.

"The tragedy of this strike is that the proposal we put to the [doctors] and their union is designed to break the cycle of confrontation and threat of action we see every time we get to the negotiating table.

"We have offered [doctors] a process to find ways of reducing working hours, improving training and working conditions and ultimately the treatment of patients. To dismiss our proposal as "just another committee" must leave people wondering what [the doctors] want."

But the union's Auckland DHB national executive representative, Dr Lisa Edwards, said the doctors should have the right to negotiate their own terms and conditions, "rather than having it dictated to us by a committee".

"We can't see how this committee will improve anything, really."

Both sides will meet again today.

$18 an hour for 175 hours' work

Junior doctor Michelle Locke earns $105,000 a year. The sum may seem large, but in the last fortnight alone, she worked 175 hours.

On her pay scale, that works out to be about $18 an hour.

"Don't get me wrong, I don't think we're particularly badly paid. But I guess it's one thing to say I get $100,000 and another thing to say that, actually, I'm slogging my guts out and getting $18 an hour for it."

Dr Locke will be among the country's 2500 junior doctors involved in a historic national strike beginning on Thursday for better working conditions.

They have rejected the district health boards' offer to set up a joint committee to look at the issue - a move the health boards say will break the cycle of confrontation and threat of action.

Dr Nigel Murray, the health boards' advocate, said industrial action was normally a last resort when negotiations failed - it shouldn't be a response to a proposal aimed at finding better ways of working.

Dr Locke said strike action was not something the doctors wanted, either.

A senior registrar at Middlemore Hospital's plastic surgery unit, Dr Locke gets a fixed salary regardless of the hours worked. On her pay scale, it has been worked out as a 60- to 65-hour week - although as last fortnight's work schedule showed, the hours can vary greatly.

"It's not normally that bad."

Last fortnight included four 24-hour call days, in which she starts work at 7.30am, gets home around midnight and carries a pager to allow hospital staff to reach her.

The strike

* Junior doctors in all 21 district health boards.

* Takes place from 7am Thursday to 7am the following Tuesday.

* Hospitals will be offering limited services, including emergency services. Non-urgent surgery, outpatient and mental health clinics may be cancelled.

* People with non-urgent conditions will be asked to seek help from their family doctor or nearest accident and medical centre.

* For non-urgent cases, ring Healthline on 0800 611 116.

* For Auckland residents, North Shore, Waitakere, Auckland City and Middlemore Hospitals and community units will accept women in labour.